young? upwardly mobile?

Well, no. But I used to be young…

I don’t think we had yuppies round these parts. We were still living in black and white, and without financial institutions, credit or mobile phones. That may have been the only period in history when my hair (big and curly when left to its own devices) conformed to fashion. I’m sure there were shoulder pads, but they did not a yuppie make.

Yuppies may have had money, but they didn’t seem to have a lot else going for them. The term somehow implied people getting above their station; social mobility as something to be sneered at. They worked hard, spent their money on gaudy baubles and lived in expensive shoe boxes. Who’d want that when you could be living in a drafty student house, looking up the library card index, and handwriting essays?

Actually, politicians in NI regularly like to worry about a ‘brain drain’- the young people who leave the region and never return. The inference is that those of us who stay here, through choice or circumstance (and including those self same politicians) are just that wee bit thicker than those who leave. Maybe we didn’t have yuppies because we’re not clever enough to work in finance? Because we all know that only the brightest and the best handle the money…

So, given that I’d be too poor, too stoopid and too far from the action to ever have been a yuppie, how on earth did I end up with a health condition invariably and pejoratively linked to them?

9 thoughts on “young? upwardly mobile?”

I don’t recall ever hearing ME/CFS referred to as Yuppie Flu, but I wouldn’t be as in tune with the pejorative statements as you are. I’m sorry to hear that…I have friends who have definitely been affected quite severely by long periods of great physical distress from CFS, and I do know they have felt at times completely misunderstood. You met the “yuppie” post challenge quite well! Very nice indeed! Debra

Yuppies, the slang name for “young urban professional” or “young upwardly mobile professional”, were well after my time. In the early eighties I was well settled and playing with my doll (Elly). It was in the noughties that I was told I had Yuppie Flu (CFS). There was nothing mobile about it. For years I suffered with aching muscles and sudden loss of energy. It felt like someone had pulled a plug in the soles of my feet and the energy drained faster than bath water. Learning to adjust and live with it, is easier for me, I have nobody needing my help or contribution to make a day work. Cooking and freezing meals on good days means I have food that only needs heating on the bad ones…. If I have the energy to open the freezer door!!!

Somehow it makes the good days more precious and allows for the odd coffee in Avoca. 😉

My thoughts entirely about the brain drain. Are people really saying the rest of us are too dim to do anything productive? What a negative view of the Northern Irish. Maybe those who’re leaving are not any brainier than the rest, just looking for jobs and money.

I think one of the things that makes CFS manifest is stress. I’m sure the yuppie lifestyle created great stress, hence the possibly high occurrence aming them, or maybe they were the ones who saw the fashionable doctirs for it?